Sweet Liar (Dirty Sweet, #1)(6)

That’s what I was. Stupid.

Because even if she did ring me, there was no way I could accept her call, except to tell her that I was sorry for the egregious way I’d acted in the car.

Yet I wasn’t sorry. Not truly. Not at all.

“Fantastic,” my driver said dreamily, breaking my stupor.

I looked forward to find him also staring after Audrey.

Irritated, I scolded him. “What are you looking at?” He was even older than I was. It was inappropriate for me to be eyeing her. It was disgusting that he was. How I could feel both a fatherly protection and an indecent attraction to the girl, I had no idea.

That was a therapy session for another day.

“To the hotel, sir?” he said, moving his eyes back to the road where they belonged.

I didn’t answer right away, staring at the mobile still in my hand. I’d had no texts from my son. When I’d seen him at lunch, I’d suggested we go out for a late movie tonight. He’d said he’d get back to me. I’d felt the sting of rejection, but he was thirteen now—independent and awkward. Moody, too. Even though I traveled across the ocean to see him, he wavered these days from wanting to see his dad and wanting to spend all his free time with his friends. I remembered this age. Remembered parenting this age. My stepdaughter, Amanda, had been thirteen when I’d married her mother. I’d done this teenager thing before.

So I understood.

We were at a delicate phase, Aaron and I, and I knew it. I didn’t want to press, wanted him to reach out to me if he wanted to spend the evening in my presence. I’d known somewhere inside of me that I would be blown off. I wouldn’t have gotten inebriated if I’d expected otherwise.

Disappointment sounded in my tone nonetheless when I finally replied. “Yes. The hotel.”

The car signal clicked rhythmically as we waited at a light to turn uptown. I sunk back in my seat, letting myself remember, for a moment, the person I’d been when I’d wed. I’d felt so much older marrying a woman ten years my senior, but I was really such a child then, only twenty-five.

My, how I’d grown up since.

And now my thoughts turned back to Audrey, younger than I’d been when I’d married, but just as enthusiastic and charmed with love and life as I’d been.

I opened my texts and found where she’d sent herself a message.

Audrey: A million people in the city, and you and I met. That’s kismet.





I laughed out loud. My driver was spot on—she was fantastic. Fantastic and trusting and young and that was enough reason to delete both her number and the whimsical message from my phone.

But I saved it instead. Not because she’d hooked me, but because I needed to know it was her when she called. If she called.

She wouldn’t call.

She couldn’t have been more than ten years older than Aaron. Why would a girl her age have any interest in me? Our encounter had been one of the moment. It had been dark, and we were alone and tipsy and aroused by good conversation. Nothing else. It would be forgotten by tomorrow.

Though if she really could forget that kiss...

I was still thinking about the malleable way her lips fit to mine when I reached my hotel room on the Upper East Side. I’d forgotten and left the Do Not Disturb sign on my suite door when I’d left for the day so the bed was still rumpled and the pot for tea was still sitting on the desk. Sloppy and cluttered weren’t usually my style. An embarrassing space to bring a woman back to, not that there was one with me now. Not that I’d thought about asking Audrey to accompany me to my room.

If I had, would she have said yes?

She may have, and I would have devoured her. Would have spent the whole night showing her all the ways a man could please a woman, ways that she yearned for but couldn’t yet imagine.

Fantasizing about it made my earlier hard-on return. I took off my suit jacket and hung it on the back of the desk chair before I sat in it myself, fumbling with my belt, eager to play this daydream out with my cock in my hand.

But just as I got my zip down, I stopped, a sickening wave of guilt rolling over me. It felt crass and wrong to beat off to thoughts of this girl who could be my daughter. Even though she’d never know that I’d done it, it was degrading and a violation of sorts.

I zipped up my trousers and stood. I loosened my tie and then moved to the buttons of my shirt, undressing furiously. I needed a shower. A cold shower, that was what would take care of this.

Just as I dropped my shirt on the desk chair with my jacket, my mobile rang.

My heart leapt so high, it was practically in my throat as I scrambled to look at my screen, hoping it was her name that I’d see lighting up on the caller ID.

The name I saw instead caused me to let out a groan.

With resignation, I clicked the accept button and answered. “Hello, Ellen.” Ellen Rachel Wallace Starkney Locke. She was just Ellen Wallace again now, having shed both the name I’d given her and the one she’d received in her previous marriage. Eight years had passed now since the paperwork had become final on our divorce, and still, she made my blood boil every time I had contact with her.

“I haven’t even spoken yet, and you already have a tone,” she greeted me, with a tone of her own. So nasty. So like Ellen.

Now there was a boner killer.

“Yes, I think I earned the right, don’t you?” I didn’t need to bring up her past sins against me. She knew them.